Jeff Bezos Surprises Us With Generosity With $2 Billion Pledge To Help Homeless and Launch Preschools

Dec 24, 2018

As the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos now has a net worth of $150 billion.

Bezos Surprises do anything he wants--buying whatever he could possibly imagine or changing the lives of people that need it the most.

However, Bezos is often criticized for not following in the footsteps of more charitable tech billionaires like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Earlier this year, Senator Bernie Sanders often pointed out how Bezos should likely be doing more charitable work with his wealth. At the time, Sanders tweeted how several thousand Amazon workers use food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid to survive. "That is what a rigged economy looks like," the senator finished

However, as of late, Bezos has taken charitable giving to a new level. Bezos recently declared that he would create the "Day 1 Family Fund" to support civic groups and organizations with awards totaling $2 billion. These organizations do the work of providing food and shelter for young families in need of immediate assistance.

Bezos is also pouring his time into a "Day 1 Academies Fund". This fund would work to set up full-scholarship, high-quality Montessori-inspired preschools.

The idea for Bezos' new projects came from an open question Bezos posted on Twitter. He asked his followers to share ideas on how he might help to share his fortune. Writing that he wanted to give to people in the short term that needed it the most inspired his followers to start formulating ideas.

Bezos tweeted, "Where is the good in the world, and how can we spread it?"

Once the answers came in, Bezos got to work. After sharing his two new endeavors, Bezos took to Twitter to thank all of his followers for sending in their suggestions.

It's clear that Bezos seems to have had a real change of heart. In a September post to Instagram, Bezos shared a photo at an Amazon board meeting. What would have been any other day ordinarily was made quite unique by Bezos' choice to wear pajamas

Bezos pointed out in the caption that September is the month for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Every year, Amazon works with the American Childhood Cancer Org to help raise awareness and support for childhood cancer.

While some detractors may have painted Jeff Bezos to be apathetic to the plight of the rest of the world, they couldn't be more wrong. It's likely that Bezos was just looking for the perfect opportunity to create his own version of charitable giving.